Have you ever been given a task that involves getting someone else to do something, and when they don't do it, you're told, "You have to go to his desk and stand behind him while he does it. Sometimes that's just how you get stuff done."
That ticks me off for several reasons:
- That's not how I interact with people. If you want me to do something, don't stand behind me and expect me to do it right now unless it's a genuine emergency. If it's anything normal, send me an email or schedule something. If it's project-related, add a task and assign it to me. Standing behind me is borderline rude. Therefore I don't do it to other people.
- Why am I expected to do my job without anyone standing behind me, but instead of managing your own people you need me to do it for you?
- Unless the task requires my physical presence - which it doesn't - it's a degrading waste of my time. We should have a supply of mannequins, and when you need something done you put the mannequin behind the person and leave. I'm not even kidding about that.
- If that's really how we manage our tasks, then it's no wonder we can't get anything done. We've set the expectation that nothing matters unless someone stands behind you. The person I need isn't blowing me off because he's lazy. We just have no better way to communicate our priorities to him and he has no better way to manage them.
- What if I go over there to stand behind him and he's not there? That was a waste of time. What if someone else is already standing behind him? Are we supposed to stand in line? Is that how we get work done? It's only a matter of time before the person we're waiting in line for can't get something done because he needs someone to do something for him, and that person is standing in line behind him. Then we're gridlocked.
- If you think that we should stand behind people when we need them to do something, and you need me to stand behind him, then will you stand behind me while I stand behind him? Really, that sounds stupid? You didn't think it was stupid when you wanted me to do it.